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Schedule including this lecture.
Goddard Space Flight Center Engineering Colloquium
Date: Monday, April 12, 1999
Diversity enables discovery. The application of dynamic similarity to animals that differ in leg number, posture, and type of skeleton, has inspired the discovery of common function in legged locomotion. Remarkable similarities exist in energetics, gait, stride frequency, and ground-reaction force among trotting, running, and hopping animals as diverse as cockroaches, crabs, centipedes, quail, and rats. The dynamics of diverse species can be approximated by a sagittal plane, bouncing, spring-mass, monopode model. A notable difference among legged animals exists in posture. Operation in the horizontal plane appears to be as or more relevant to many-legged, sprawled posture animals as bouncing in the sagittal plane. Feed forward dynamic models suggest that opposing leg forces can result in self-stabilization without the use of neural, negative feedback. Sprawled posture systems can be highly maneuverable. Insects can negotiate rough terrain as if it were not there. Geckos climb up walls at over a meter per second without using claws, glue or suction. Control algorithms appear to be imbedded in the legs and musculoskeletal system. Mechanical feedback through moment arms and preflexes can simplify the control of locomotion. Biologically inspired design concepts of many-legged locomotors can be used in the next generation of faster, cheaper, better mobile robots.
Robert Full completed his undergraduate studies at SUNY Buffalo in 1979, received a master's degree in 1982, and a doctoral degree in 1984. He held post-doctoral positions at The Univ. of Chicago from 1984 to 1986 and in 1986 joined the faculty of the Univ. of California at Berkeley as an Assistant Professor of Zoology. He became a Full Professor of Integrative Biology in 1995, a Chancellor's Professor in 1997, and received a Goldman Professorship for teaching in 1998. Prof. Full directs the Poly-P.E.D.A.L. Laboratory, which studies the Performance, Energetics and Dynamics of Animal Locomotion (P.E.D.A.L.) in many-footed creatures (Poly). His internationally recognized research program in comparative physiology and biomechanics has shown how examining a diversity of animals leads to the discovery of general principles of locomotion. In 1990, Full received a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigators Award. Professor Full's research has been featured in the popular press, such as newspapers and various science magazines, and on several television shows (CNN, NBC Today Show, ABC World News Tonight, Discovery Channel).
Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Barbara Pfarr
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